DMGT’s risk modelling business invests £31m in faster, cloud-based system

RMS, a catastrophe risk models and solutions provider owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), last year invested around £31 million in developing the business’s new, faster technology platform, RMS(one).

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RMS, a catastrophe risk models and solutions provider owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), last year invested around £31 million in developing the business’s new, faster technology platform, RMS(one).

More than 400 insurers and other financial institutions use RMS models, analytics and metrics for the perils of natural disasters, such as hurricanes and earthquakes, as benchmarks for risk pricing and management. RMS(one) promises to deliver more powerful risk analysis by offering a single platform for all models and risk exposures, combined with cloud-based systems.

“[The platform] promises improvements in model run times and data query latency,” said Hemant Shah, president and CEO of RMS. “Clients will be able to access a rich ecosystem of value adding applications and functionality, utilising portfolios of differing risk models and stress tests.”

According to Shah, RMS(one) will be able to return answers 100 times faster than existing catastrophic risk modelling systems.

“RMS(one) will deliver open, real-time risk management at speeds feasible only with cloud-based technology. This will enable clients to use simulator-type analytics to measure any number of possible risk outcomes,” he said.

The new system has been in development for several years, and has undergone “intense” beta testing with early adopter customers over the past financial year, according to DMGT’s Annual Report 2013. It is due to be launched in 2014.

RMS said that it has been actively recruiting new staff with a background in cloud-based systems and software to develop RMS(one). It is also investing in client-facing teams and support staff to encourage rapid adoption of the new platform when it is live.

While the business expects a growth in revenue from RMS(one) once it launches, it warned that ensuring data security will be a “significant” cost.

“The robust infrastructure underpinning the hybrid cloud environment must meet clients’ expectations of security and data integrity standards, and these new data centre costs will also be a significant operating expense,” said Shah.